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A major part of the war against God and godly values is the scourge of abortion—the murder of the most helpless.

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Silencing God's Children

The ancient prophet Ezekiel thundered these words: “You took your sons and your daughters, whom you bore to Me, and these you sacrificed to [false gods] to be devoured … You have slain My children and offered them up to them by causing them to pass through the fire” (Ezekiel 16:20-21Ezekiel 16:20-2120 Moreover you have taken your sons and your daughters, whom you have borne to me, and these have you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Is this of your prostitutions a small matter, 21 That you have slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?American King James Version×).
The thought of sacrificing precious infants, burning them on an altar to a pagan god of stone, would strike most people today as abhorrent. But are we not guilty of the same crime when we sacrifice millions of innocent babies to the modern idols of selfishness and convenience?
Since the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade, more than 56 million abortions have taken place in America—an unconscionable slaughter of innocents in a professing Christian nation. Yet even this pales beside the ghastly figure of 40 million abortions every year worldwide (estimating low)—meaning that at least 1.2 billion children have been aborted since 1980 (numberofabortions.com).
Sadly, America has become a supporter of the broader killing. In one of his first acts in office, U.S. President Barack Obama “lifted restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad” (Reuters, Jan. 23, 2009)—meaning U.S. taxpayers are forced to fund abortions and abortion promotion in other countries.
On Feb. 26, 2014, the president told his pro-abortion political group Organizing for Action that they are doing “God's work.” On April 26 of the previous year, he spoke at a gala for Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider, concluding with, “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you. God bless America” (emphasis added throughout).
Such words strain our credulity. It borders on blasphemy that anyone, let alone the leader of a nation, would expect God to bless an organization that is in the business of destroying His creation—killing more than 300,000 unborn babies a year, about one every 94 seconds. What God is he referring to? Clearly not the God of the Bible!
As Fox News radio commentator Todd Starnes notes in his new book God Less America:“We ask God to bless America, but we silence his children. God bless America? We should be on our knees asking for His mercy instead”(2014, p. 210).

Killing the unborn is big business

But America is far from that. For abortion providers, the slaughter of the unborn can be a lucrative business. A former abortion provider has explained how she was on her way to becoming a millionaire by selling abortions to teenage girls.
The marketing began in kindergarten and grade school sex education. The goal for fifth and sixth grade students, according to Carol Everett, “was to get them sexually active on a low dose birth control pill that we knew they would get pregnant on … That pill did not work, and we could accomplish our goal of 3-5 abortions between the ages of 13 and 18” (quoted by Peter Baklinski, LifeSiteNews.com, May 12, 2014).
Government has now mandated abortion insurance coverage for the whole country through President Obama's health care legislation, the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. Starnes points out: “The Obama administration is trying to force religious organizations to provide insurance for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs in direct violation of their religious beliefs …
“The Internal Revenue Service launched investigations into pro-life organizations, demanding to know the contents of their prayers. They ordered a Wyoming church to turn over its membership rolls. This is happening right here, right now, in the United States of America. We are under attack from within” (p. 209).
Another pro-life group was told by the IRS that “they could not picket or protest abortion clinics. An attorney representing the pro-life groups called the IRS actions 'intimidating' and 'heavy-handed.' One IRS agent went so far as to tell a pro-life group it had to remain neutral on the issue of abortion and lectured the group's president about forcing its religious beliefs on others.
“'You have to know your boundaries,' IRS agent Sherry Wan can be heard saying in a recording. 'You have to know your limits. You have to respect other people's beliefs'” (p. 8). Remember that this refers to beliefs about what is in fact murdering unborn children!
Thankfully, the Supreme Court ruled on June 30—in the case brought by the arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby—against government attempts to impose employer-provided coverage for abortion-inducing drugs when it's against the employer's religious beliefs. But this was by a narrow margin of 5-4, and time may see it overturned. In fact, Senate Democrats have already attempted to circumvent it. In any case it remains disturbing how rabidly the government has pursued the pro-abortion agenda and persecuted those who stand for life!

Overlooking infanticide

The media has been complicit in this, as it has in most aspects of the liberal-progressive agenda. Commenting on the failure of the news media to report last year on the trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell over late-term abortions and infanticide—ostensibly because it would draw negative attention to abortion—liberal political analyst Kirsten Powers wrote in USA Today:
“Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations? It's not your fault … There has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page … “None of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months [as of the time Powers wrote this] … The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace”(“Philadelphia Abortion Clinic Horror,” April 11, 2013).
Meanwhile, the indoctrination of the younger generation continues. Officials at a high school in Tacoma, Washington, decided “to allow posters and events for a 'gay'-straight alliance while refusing to allow similar posters and events related to the local Students for Life …
“[The pro-life] group wanted to put up two posters. The first reads 'Since Roe v. Wade 1⁄3 of our generation has been aborted' … The second poster quotes President Ronald Reagan: 'I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion is already born.' But school officials said the posters might 'offend'” (“School: 'Gay' Is OK, But Pro-Lifers Must Go,” WND.com, Feb. 19, 2014). Yet of course they allowed the pro-gay messages.
Where is the outrage over the ongoing mass murder of helpless babies? In the approximately five minutes it's taken you to read this short article, about 375 abortions have been performed around the world (see the counters at numberofabortions.com).
God warns in Numbers 35:33Numbers 35:33So you shall not pollute the land wherein you are: for blood it defiles the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.American King James Version×that “blood defiles the land, and no atonement can be made for the land, for the blood is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it.” That includes all who bear responsibility. Clearly the whole world is facing judgment over this global atrocity!

On arrival in La Paz, Pope Francis was presented by Bolivian President Evo Morales with a wooden crucifix carved in the form of a hammer and sickle, the symbol of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Fidel.
Had Pope John Paul II been handed that crucifix, he might have cracked it over Evo’s head. For John Paul II had seen up close what communism did–to his country, his church and his people in 45 years of Bolshevik rule.q
On his arrival in the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega in 1983, Pope John Paul castigated a priest-collaborator who dared to serve that Sandinista Marxist regime as culture minister.
And, while in Managua, he warned Catholics they were being threatened by “unacceptable ideological commitments.”
Today we have a pope for whom free-market capitalism is the “unacceptable ideological commitment.”
As The New York Times reports, Pope Francis does “not just criticize the excesses of capitalism. He compares them to the ‘dung of the devil.‘ He does not simply argue that ‘greed for money’ is a bad thing. He calls it a ‘subtle dictatorship that condemns and enslaves.'”
In South America, Pope Francis “made a historic apology for the crimes of the Roman Catholic Church during the period of Spanish colonialism–even as he called for a global movement against a ‘new colonialism’ rooted in an inequitable economic order.”
“The Argentine pope seemed to be asking for a social revolution.”
Now the church has a long tradition of criticizing capitalism, dating back to the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891.
In American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America, author Russ Shaw deals with the causes and consequences of what some Catholics contend was a fatal embrace of a heretical “Americanism” in the 19th century.
This pope goes beyond that. His words about capitalism echo what Cold War Catholics said of communism, that it is a tree poisoned at the root that can yield only bad fruit, and, as the Gospel teaches, ought to be cut down and cast into the fire.
What is wrong with the pope’s neo-socialist sermonizing?
While capitalism does indeed generate inequalities, freedom, too, produces inequality. For all men and all women are unequal in abilities, energy and opportunities. In a free society, some inevitably succeed, others fail.
For as the Biblical parable teaches, some are given 10 talents, others two, and God judges us on how well we use the talents we were given. The only way to achieve absolute equality is absolute tyranny, the remorseless redistribution of wealth by an all-powerful regime.
The pontiff says the capitalist “idolatry of money” creates “the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.” But it is egalitarianism that has proven to be the road to dictatorship, dictatorships run by egalitarians in the name of the “proletariat.”
Free enterprise has brought more millions out of poverty, enabled more billions of people to live longer, freer, healthier and happier lives, and produced more widespread prosperity than any other economic system.
What is the superior system the pope believes we should adopt?
What has Argentina produced but an economically failed state, incompetent socialist rulers, and an occasional Peronista in sunglasses and shiny boots? Is Latin America a fine model?
The pope used the phrase “dung of the devil.” Is that not a good description of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital? And is not satanic the precise word to describe the scores of millions of dead that 70 years of Marxist-socialist ideology produced?
The 100 million people of Eastern Europe, the 300 million of the late Soviet Union,the 1.2 billion people in China–are they not better off the further they have moved away from Marxism, and the closer they have moved toward free-market capitalism?
As for the pope’s apology for the sins of Spanish Catholicism in Latin America, why does he not speak up for the culture Catholicism helped to create, the eradication of paganism, and the termination of such practices as human sacrifice among the indigenous peoples?
But, then, we Americans are no strangers to “apology tours.”
The pope is calling for a “social revolution.” But what country, among the 190-plus in the U.N., comes closest to the utopia the pope has in mind? Or does his utopia exist only in the mind?
The pope is saintly man. But he has no special understanding of economic systems or of climate change. He is the Vicar of Christ, of the Savior sent by the Father to teach us what we must believe and how we must live to attain eternal life.
Christ did not come among us to end colonialism, or redistribute wealth, or start a social revolution against the empire of the Caesars.
As he told Pontius Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world.”
Pope Francis is the infallible custodian of that truths Christ taught. Is that not sufficient, Your Holiness? Why not leave the socialist sermons to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren?Patrick J. Buchanan needs no introduction to VDARE.COM readers; his booksState of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, and Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? are available from Amazon.com. Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book“The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority.

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Zimbabwe was once the economic powerhouse and breadbasket of southern Africa. Its rich lands allowed the nation to be self sufficient in virtually everything during the days when it was the pariah among nations. Today its economy is in shambles, inflation is in triple digits and starvation and AIDS has sapped the strength and will of its people.

In 2000 I spent several days in the country visiting with some of the people and seeing the remains of a once vital country. There was still some hope that life would get better, but in the four years since more have fled and, worse yet, it seems the will to rise up and push for reforms has all but gone. This article in the Christian Science Monitor has one paragraph that explains why the citizens have not yet appeared in the streets of Harare or Bulawayo… Nor does it have a figure like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a unifying moral force in the anti-apartheid struggle. Zimbabwe's churches are divided, as is civil society and the political opposition.
New elections are coming on March 31. Will another sham election arouse the indignation of capable people? We'll see.

After a lot of criticism over the weekend of his recent remarks about letting the "good" illegal aliens stay, Donald Trump has gone on national media to clarify his remarks about amnesty -- a bit. There is still a lot of confusion about the details of his stance, and it is likely that he has not yet thought about those policy details.
On the basis of the new details he has provided in the last two days, NumbersUSA is changing his amnesty rating from HARMFUL to MIXED on our Worker-Protection Immigration Grade Cards. (See all ratings and grades for 21 Presidential Hopefuls at: www. NumbersUSA.com/2016
With that change and the ratings he has on the other nine immigration categories, Trump has raised his overall grade to a C+, which again puts him in the No. 3 spot among all 21 Presidential Hopefuls of both Parties.
(Rick Santorum earns an A grade, and Scott Walker earns a B-minus as the only Hopefuls whose policy stances on 10 immigration issues are more positive toward American workers and their families.)
Many thanks to all of you Trump supporters who sent messages in one way or another to the Trump campaign to improve what he was saying about legalizing illegal aliens. This is what supporters of every candidate ought to be doing. We provide contact information on each candidate. Just click on the photos on www.NumbersUSA.com/2016.

WHAT TRUMP IS SAYING NOW ABOUT AMNESTY

I'm going to start here by giving you direct quotes from two interviews. Then I'll suggest what these quotes may mean about policy and what questions remain.

This is from the CNN interview with Jake Tapper: (I have edited out parts that don't deal with the question of what Trump's plan would do with illegal aliens who are in this country.)

(TAPPER) Would you be open-minded about a path to citizenship? Is that a nonstarter with you? Where are you on that issue? (TRUMP) . . . First of all -- and you said it -- you have to stop it (illegal immigration). You have to stop it fast. And we can do that. We can do that with combinations of walls and Border Patrol . . . and fencing.
Once that's done, we have a situation that is going to be done immediately, before that's done. We're going to get the bad ones out. We have some really bad dudes right here in this country, and we're getting them out, and we're sending them back to where they came from. And I don't mean Mexico. I mean, it's -- they come from all over. . . .(TAPPER) There obviously will be -- will remain, after you get rid of the bad ones, millions and millions of undocumented workers who are not bad ones. And they're women and they're children and they're men who are here who came here for a better life, and -- but you're not going to yet take a position on whether or not you would favor a path to citizenship?(TRUMP) I will say, from a moral standpoint, from a physical standpoint, you're talking about at least 11 million people. I have heard the number is much higher than that, because that number has been bandied about for years. . . . But we're going to take the high ground. We're going to do what's right. Some (illegal aliens) are going to have to go. And some, we're just going to see what happens. It's a very, very big subject, and a very complicated subject. . . ."

This is from the Fox interview with Hannity: (Also edited for the pertinent content.)

(TRUMP) . . . these (illegal aliens) can be some great people-- but, you either have laws or you don't have laws. I would get them back, I would get them back where they are, and I would try to work out a process where they can come in legally. But, they have to come in legally, it's about laws, it's about borders. If we don't have a border, we don't have a country. So, I get them out, and if they were really outstanding, because some of these people have been here for a long period of time, I'd let them back legally. They have to come through a legal system, and I'd make that system much faster, much quicker. I want people to come into the country. I love the fact that people come into the country, but they have to come in legally. Not only them, other people. We welcome people, I mean, my parents and my grandparents, they came from different parts of the world, too. We all sort of did when you get right down to it. . . .
I would expedite [the process], because some of these people (illegal aliens) are fantastic people. I've been to the border, I was there a few days ago. I met some people, these are fantastic people and they have great reputations within the community. So what I'd do is that I would expedite it. You have to have laws. If you don't have laws, you don't have a country. I would get them out, and I would try, the good ones -- the bad ones, they're gone, they never come back. They'll never get back into this country. But, the good ones, of which there are many, I want to expedite it so they can come back in legally.

WHAT DOES TRUMP MEAN?
This is more difficult. I was talking today with somebody who has spent some time with Trump who emphasized that he does not have real experience with policy and doesn't think in terms of detailed policy. The likelihood is that these comments from him on national TV are things he has thought about but not things that have been worked out in policymaking meetings with staffers and others.
Note that Trump largely sidestepped questions about citizenship. But these two interviews over the last two days -- combined with interviews granted last week about wanting to keep hard-working illegal aliens in the country -- seem to suggest a policy like this:
1. Illegal aliens would not be rewarded with legal status (work permits, benefits, Social Security cards, citizenship, etc.) without at least first leaving the country.
2. No legal status would be granted to those illegal aliens until illegal immigration is brought under control. At a minimum, that includes a fence and adequate Border Patrol activity. He still hasn't said if he would take away the jobs magnet nor has he commented on a number of interior enforcement tools.
3. He would start giving legal status to illegal aliens who have gone home ONLY after the "bad" illegal aliens have been deported from the U.S.
4. Once the prerequisites have been met, he would move quickly to get deserving illegal aliens back into the United States. But who are the deserving ones? Some previous comments suggest that it might be only people who have worked hard (illegally) at U.S. jobs and not used taxpayer assistance. Some people think his comments suggest that only illegal aliens with highly valued skills would be allowed back in. Or maybe it is just anybody who didn't build a criminal record while in the U.S. Depending on the answer to this question, the number allowed back in might be as high as nine million or as low as just tens of thousands, by my estimate.
5. He wants the deserving illegal aliens back in the United States in an expedited fashion. Does that mean there will be additional green cards made available, in which case legal immigration will rise considerably for some time? Or does he want to make the currently available green cards in the current numbers to be given first to the illegal aliens, causing other foreign citizens who are in line to wait more years, in which case the level of legal immigration would remain the same at around 1 million annually?
In general, Trump has described a Touchback Amnesty which was pushed a few years ago by Rep. Mike Pence (now governor of Indiana). At the time, he was one of the hottest rising stars of the conservative movement. Pence's star immediately plummeted upon his championing the Touchback Amnesty, and it took him years to recover political stature.
The difference between Trump's Touchback and Pence's seems to be that Trump has put a lot of "have-to" steps before the amnesty would be given. Those steps might take years.
We may be being generous in giving Trump a Mixed rating on amnesty right now. We will be watching very closely for more signals. We know that he is very, very serious about protecting the American people from tragic violence from illegal aliens. We haven't seen corresponding signs yet that he is thinking about protecting American workers and their families from harmful job and wage competition.ROY BECK is Founder & President of NumbersUSA

NumbersUSA's blogs are copyrighted and may be republished or reposted only if they are copied in their entirety, including this paragraph, and provide proper credit to NumbersUSA. NumbersUSA bears no responsibility for where our blogs may be republished or reposted. The views expressed in blogs do not necessarily reflect the official position of NumbersUSA.

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World Magazine Editor Marvin Olasky has a column today that shows the lack of awareness most Americans have of the clear and present danger from nuclear armed nations like Iran or other radical Islamic terror groups.

The current flap over DP World's management of American ports highlights the inadequacies of this war on terror. The muddled thinking that would allow an Arab country access to not just port management but the inner workings of the port security plans is hard to figure. Why would we even want to let this happen? Is there not an American company that could do this job, allowing us to keep it home grown?

The urgency based, on the facts before us, is just not there. Iran is moving closer each day to possessing a nuclear weapon. They have said enough against Israel, America and western values to justify inclusion in the “axis of evil.” Does anyone remember that description?

This morning there was a report that Former United States President Bill Clinton was doing double speak this week with his comments about the Dubai ports deal. While his wife speaks against the deal from her senate perch, he is advising the Dubai government on how to finesse this issue with the public and lawmakers.

America and Britain are whistling past the graveyard. Some want to return to a normal world, thinking it is possible to subdue our enemies through a combination of diplomacy and military intervention. It is likely true that we have bought ourselves some time by invading Iraq and Afghanistan. But the demon is out of the bottle and we are seeing the reality of forces aligned against us, intent on our destruction. They will stop at nothing less.

Meanwhile our culture continues on, oblivious to the fact that it all could suddenly come to an end. The words of Isaiah call us to repent of the sins that overcome us from head to toe. “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil,…though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow”. There is room and time for repentance God says, but if not, “…if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword”. (Isaiah 1:16Isaiah 1:16Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil;American King James Version×, 18, 20)

We don't Winston Churchill today but we have God's word to instruct us and send a wake up call. It is still not too late.

Donald Trump's unorthodox campaign has performed a public service by shining the national spotlight on the problem of "sanctuary cities," which shelter illegal aliens from deportation. The tragedy of Kate Steinle, who died in the arms of her father after being shot by an illegal alien, is that her death was preventable, yet officials have defiantly defended their sanctuary policies.
It wasn't only the city and county of San Francisco that released the seven-times-convicted, five-times-deported Mexican who killed Steinle. Barack Obama's ICE let him go, too. ICE has released many thousands of criminal aliens onto unsuspecting local communities instead of returning them to their countries of origin, including 121 who were subsequently charged with murdering Americans in the past five years.
According to government figures compiled by Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, more than 8,100 deportable aliens (including 3,000 felons) were released by sanctuary cities and counties in just the first eight months of last year. Some 1,900 of those wrongly released aliens have already re-offended 4,300 times, racking up 7,800 new charges including murder, violent assault, rape and child rape.
The first local sanctuary policy was officially adopted more than 30 years ago by notorious Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates. Since then, about 300 cities and counties have adopted one or more sanctuary policies such as: refusing to inquire about immigration status when making a traffic stop or during other routine police work; refusing to report a subject's unlawful status to the appropriate federal agency (now called ICE); or refusing to honor a "detainer," which is a written request to detain a subject until ICE can deport him.
Bills to stop local sanctuary policies were introduced in Congress and state legislatures, but they all wilted under pressure from amnesty advocates, such as businesses dependent on cheap foreign labor. The U.S. House last week finally approved a bill to withhold certain federal reimbursements from sanctuaries, but the promise of a presidential veto assures that even this minor reform will never become law.
Headlines proclaim that Republicans voted to "crack down" on sanctuary cities, but nothing will change unless the restrictions are folded into a must-pass appropriations bill. Washington, D.C., for example, remains a sanctuary city even though Congress has the constitutional power "to exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever" over our nation's capital.
Local sanctuary policies protect thousands from deportation, but the real damage is done at the federal level.Policies instituted by the Obama administration have effectively given sanctuary to millions, thanks to Obama's wholesale refusal to enforce immigration laws.
Take Obama's executive amnesty of last November 20, which would have given legal status and work permits (including Social Security numbers) to approximately five million of the estimated 11 million illegal aliens. A brave federal judge blocked the work permits, but the five million still benefit from Obama's decision to give them a low enforcement priority, another form of sanctuary.Obama recently extended lower-priority enforcement to several million more people, and approximately 87 percent of the illegal population — all but 1.4 million of the 11 million — are basically home free, as if the United States is now the sanctuary for the whole world.
Don't assume illegal immigration has stopped just because the official estimate of the illegal population has remained steady at 11 to 12 million for a decade. To replace attrition (a.k.a. self-deportation), illegal immigration (which includes people who enter legally but don't go home when their visas expire) continues unabated at the rate of 1,000 per day.About 2.5 million people have entered illegally or become illegal since Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, and that number doesn't even include legal immigration of more than 1.1 million people a year. The Census Bureau estimates that "net migration" will bring 14 million new immigrants to the United States during the next 10 years.
Of all of Obama's sanctuary policies, probably the worst is his vast expansion of refugee and asylum policies. Largely unnoticed by national media, tens of thousands of so-called refugees, mostly from Muslim countries, are being resettled all over the United States.The United States now receives more refugees than all other countries combined and plops them down in what are called "seed communities" where local opposition is not tolerated. There's even a special federal program to combat "pockets of resistance," such as the recent uproar in Twin Falls, Idaho, where the U.S. government wants to send 300 refugees from war-torn Syria.The July 16 murders of four U.S. Marines and a U.S. Navy sailor in Chattanooga, Tenn., by a Kuwaiti-born Palestinianis a good example of the dangers of allowing Muslims to enter our country legally as refugees. Like the Boston Marathon bombing by the Tsarnaev brothers in 2013, and like the dozens of Somali young men who have disappeared from Minneapolis, Chattanooga is another case where children of immigrants are radicalized by the terrorist ideologies of the countries their parents came from.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

An interesting article from http://www.ucg.org/ about Japan and North Korea. This follows this post about mindsets. For a free magazine subscription or to get the books recommended for free clickHERE!or call 1-888-886- 8632.Please follow me here for continued posts.

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If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense.

After North Korea's provocative missile tests in early July, Japan said it was considering whether a preemptive strike on North Korea's missile bases would violate its constitution.

According to Mari Yamaguchi (AP, July 10), several government officials openly discussed whether the country ought to take steps to better defend itself, including setting up the legal framework to allow Japan to launch a preemptive strike.

“If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack… there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.

“With all of Japan easily within range of North Korean missiles, an opinion poll conducted by Japan's NHK television showed that 82 percent of respondents in Japan said they felt 'fearful' or 'somewhat fearful' of the seven or more missiles that North Korea shot into the Sea of Japan on July 4,” reported Anthony Faiola in the Washington Post July 11.

Japan's constitution, written after World War II, prohibits the use of military force, though Japan does maintain a 240,000-strong self-defense force.

However, AP quoted a Japanese Defense Agency spokeswoman as saying Japan has no attacking weapons such as ballistic missiles that could reach North Korea. Its forces only have ground-to-air missiles and ground-to-vessel missiles, she said on condition of anonymity.

For their part, North Korea scoffed at the UN Security Council resolution asking it to quit launching missiles and return to six-party talks. “The vicious, hostile policy of the U.S. and the irresponsibility of the UN Security Council have created an extremely dangerous situation on the Korean Peninsula,” said a North Korean Foreign Ministry statement ( The Week, July 28, 2006).

Trump's Plan to Auction the Presidency
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Why is Donald Trump running for president? Marc Hodak nails it. Trump is planning to auction the Presidency to the highest bidder. Sure, he may be happy to w...